Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Incredible Final trip of the 2011 Season! Oct 29th, 2011

This afternoon we left the dock at 2pm for the final trip of the 2011 season and what an amazing trip to finish the season:)

We had received a report earlier in the day that the Southern Resident Orcas had been heard on the Port Townsend Hydrophone at 9am moving north out of Puget Sound (they had been spotted near Vashon Isl the previous day, north of Tacoma)! So we crossed our fingers hoping that they would move far enough North that we would be able to encounter them on our 2pm tour.

In the meantime we received a report of two Humpback Whales south of Discovery Island and that was the first Whales we encountered during our afternoon tour. Amongst the 2 Humpbacks was "Split Fin", I first encountered this particular Humpback back in 2007 and one of my favorite Humpback Whales:) So I was very happy I got to see "Split Fin" on my final trip and say au revoir until next year!

As we were watching "Split Fin" and the other Humpback we suddenly started to spot several dorsal fin near Oak Bay Flats and realized we had members of J-pod withing 200yds of the Humpback Whales:) We watched several members of J-pod chasing Salmon and I managed to i.d. J27 "Blackberry", J26 "Mike", J22 "Oreo", J34 "Double Stuf", J16 "Slick", J17 "Princess Angeline" and J38 "Cookie"! It was so exciting but also a little sad to realize this would be the final encounter of the 2011 season with the Southern Resident Orcas!

This was the perfect trip to end the 2011 Whale Watching season, one of the best seasons we have had in recent years:) I look forward to seeing our friends, both the Marine Mammal's and our many passengers that have become friends, again in 2012!

You can see even more pictures from our final tour at our Facebook site. See the link on the right hand side of this page.

Please click on the images to enlarge. Images may be downloaded free of charge for personal use only and may not be republished unless credit is given to Five Star Whale Watching.

A disk can be purchased with various high quality images featuring Orcas and other Marine Wildlife. Contact our Photographer, Andrew Lees, at alees1@hotmail.com for further details or visit his website at http://andrewlees.webs.com/ to discover more of his work. Part of the proceeds from this disk will go to the Center for Whale Research to help fund continued research of the Southern Resident Orcas.

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This is a public journal and blog for those working at 5 star whale watching. This will provide documentation of the southern resident killer whales, transient killer whales, baleen whales, marine life, birds and nature for your enjoyment. It will also serve as a research data bank for Marine Mammal Research Group and the public.